ELECTROMECHANICS

Electromechanics

In engineering, electromechanics combines electrical and mechanical processes. Devices which carry out electrical operations by using moving parts are known as electromechanical. Strictly speaking, a manually operated switch is an electromechanical component. The term however is usually understood to refer to devices such as relays, which allow a voltage or current to control other, isolated voltages and currents by mechanically switching sets of contacts by which a voltage can actuate a moving linkage. Relays originated with telegraphy as electromechanical devices used to regenerate telegraph signals. Before the development of modern electronics, electromechanical devices were widely used in complex circuits, including electric typewriters and teletypes, and up to the complexity of an electromechanical digital computer.